Cross-Examination

• Michigan — Trump cruises, Biden gets embarrassed: It wasn’t close, nor was it expected to be. In yesterday’s Michigan presidential primary, Donald Trump notched his fifth straight massive victory over Nikki Haley. The Associated Press called the contest shortly after the polls closed, and with 98% of the vote counted, Trump led Haley 68.2% to 26.5%. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “Trump’s dominance in the first contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, and now Michigan, have given the former president an air of inevitability and knocked Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, into also-ran status.” Haley is indeed an also-ran, and her stubbornness harms the Republican Party’s prospects for unifying and turning its focus toward Joe Biden. If Trump is wise, he’ll not utter Haley’s name again on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, on the Democrat side, incumbent Joe Biden won roughly 81% of the vote, more than 617,000 votes, while someone named “Uncommitted” got some 13% of the vote — which amounts to more than 100,000 votes. Much of this opposition was a protest vote against what Michigan’s large Arab-American community sees as Joe Biden’s pro-Israel stance in the Jewish state’s war against Hamas terrorists. It’s hard to know what effect this protest will amount to in November, but it should also be noted that the state’s socially conservative Muslim population was already disenchanted by the Democrats’ embrace of the Rainbow Mafia and its emphasis on mutilating gender-dysphoric children. Perhaps more important is that Biden lost 19% of Michigan Democrats, which is 144,000 votes, or within 10,000 votes of his margin of victory in the state in 2020.

• Judge rejects Delaware’s early voting law: Superior Court Judge Mark H. Conner recently ruled that Delaware’s early voting law, which allowed voters to cast a ballot up to 10 days before Election Day, violated the state’s constitution. Conner observed that Delaware’s constitution was clear, enumerating only one day as Election Day: “Our Constitution provides only one such day, not any day or series of days the General Assembly sees fit.” He further ruled that the law violated Delaware’s constitution by making absentee voting indefinite and expanding it to anyone. “By granting indefinite absentee voting to those who are unable to vote in a single election,” his decision stated, “Delaware’s Permanent Absentee Voting Statute impermissibly extends beyond the limited authority granted to the General Assembly by our Constitution.” Delaware’s deputy attorney general argued the constitution’s establishment of “Election Day” should not be taken literally, therefore the state legislature was free to expand it beyond one day. Rejecting that assertion, Conner pointed out that the constitution only granted the legislature power to draft laws that make elections more secure and improve ballot secrecy. This is a win for election integrity.

• The remote IRS: Thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats, the IRS got an $80 billion raise, effectively doubling the size of the tax agency’s workforce, largely to go after wealthy tax cheats. At least that’s what Biden claimed. Yet despite being flush with more taxpayer dollars, the IRS has yet to require employees to return to the office full time, as it is currently 50% on-site and 50% remote. Thus when Republican lawmakers ask when the IRS will finally end its COVID-induced teleworking system and get all agency employees back in the office full time, the expected response should be “immediately.” The agency is supposedly working for the good of the country, isn’t it? Here’s the rub, which is why the IRS has thus far refused to end its temporary COVID remote work system: It would not be able to hire the desired amount of employees should it require them to all come into the office. Furthermore, requiring IRS employees to come into the office could limit the scope of the agency, which is exactly what Washington does not want to do.

• Hamas rejects temporary ceasefire: Joe Biden, in attempting to placate the radical leftist anti-Israel component within his own party, has been seeking to put pressure on Israel to agree to a temporary ceasefire in its war with Hamas. In exchange for a ceasefire, Biden hopes to get Hamas to release the more than 100 Israeli hostages the terrorist organization is still holding. “My national security advisor tells me that we’re close,” Biden claimed on Monday. “We’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire.” However, Hamas leadership is having none of it if the ceasefire is not permanent. As Hamas official Ahmad Abdelhadi said, they’re “not interested in any concessions that do not lead to a complete and total cessation of the aggression against our people.” Of course, that won’t float with Israeli leadership, who have vowed to eliminate Hamas from Gaza. By Monday, we will know if Biden is successful in achieving some form of a ceasefire.

• Girls on antidepressants: We’ve got a drug for that. This seems to be the approach of Big Pharma and the doctors who almost reflexively dispense their wares. Among the victims of this emphasis on medication are adolescent girls, as new research indicates that the monthly antidepressant dispensing rate for girls ages 12 to 17 has surged 129.6% since the Communist Chinese allowed a deadly coronavirus to escape from their Wuhan Institute of Virology. As Axios reports, “Antidepressant prescribing to youths rose 63.5% during the pandemic, with adolescent girls accounting for some of the sharpest increases.” As Axios adds, “A shortage of mental health workers and the shift toward telehealth and remote prescribing may have contributed to a prioritization of drug treatments over therapy.” As we’ve noted in these pages recently, the kids are not alright, and plenty of blame for this wreckage can be affixed to the Democrats and their teachers union pals.

• Fentanyl’s young victims aren’t overdosing; they’re being poisoned: More than 40 years ago, First Lady Nancy Reagan was roundly derided for championing the “Just Say No” campaign, which encouraged children and young people to reject the allure of experimenting with or using drugs. Years later, we had the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, better known as DARE. And yet, as James Fishback reports in The Free Press, the situation has never been more deadly for America’s young people: “Every week in America, about 22 kids die of a drug overdose. Eighty percent of those deaths are linked to fentanyl — a cheap synthetic opioid fifty times more potent than heroin. Even with illicit drug use among middle and high school students on the decline, fatal teen overdoses have never been higher… Fentanyl is so deadly it often kills kids experimenting with drugs for the first time. Between July 2019 and December 2021, according to the CDC, 86 percent of adolescents who died of a fentanyl overdose had never previously experienced a drug overdose.” What’s the solution? Well, education, for starters. Where’s the Ad Council with the latest version of the iconic “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” campaign?

• Does Elon Musk still have deep state subversives working at X? Quick: What’s been the biggest and most consequential recent story in the fight for free speech? If you answered “Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter,” pat yourself on the back. Amid all the left-leaning censors in Big Tech and on social media, the importance of having a robust and ubiquitous platform dedicated to free speech can’t be overstated. But the fight for free speech is far from over. Indeed, as columnist Larry Elder points out, it’s still raging beneath the surface at Musk’s X. In a recent post from his account to @elonmusk, Elder wrote, in part: “I believe conservatives are STILL being suppressed — and that new followers are only painstakingly added — because of the anti-conservative, anti-Trump hostility of your deep state Twitter employees. This is a shout out to other conservatives/libertarians on your platform, please tell me if you’ve ALSO experienced the same sluggish growth in new followers, a stark contrast from what happened when Musk first took over when I — and many other conservatives — had an explosion of new followers. Please comment!” The replies that Elder’s post elicited are sobering, to say the least. After a promising start, things appear to have gone south since Musk hired former NBC Universal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as CEO. Hmm, who’d have thunk? Perhaps it’s time for another housecleaning. As Elder concludes, “Mr. Musk, a lot of conservatives still detect a serious deep state problem at X, a platform we need now more than ever.”

• Rotten Apple EV: Apple is abandoning its long-running effort to develop a self-driving or autonomous electric car. On Tuesday, the tech giant announced that it was ending all work on the project and would instead focus more on developing its AI products. The move will likely lead to several hundred employees being let go. The motive behind Apple’s decision likely has much to do with the EV market writ large. While Biden administration officials have been pushing for greater EV adoption, they have had to back off their original goals, as Americans simply aren’t buying in. EV makers have been cutting their production output due to sluggish sales. Serving to underscore this reality, Mercedes-Benz recently backed off its previous commitment to solely produce EVs by 2030. The company pointed to the “market conditions” and the lack of EV sales targets being met as the reason for the decision.

Headlines

• Trump leads in Wisconsin and overtakes Biden in all swing states (Washington Examiner)

• Airman who set self on fire grew up on religious compound, had anarchist past (Washington Post) | Hamas joins U.S. leftists in hailing airman who self-immolated (Washington Free Beacon)

• Illegal immigrant from El Salvador charged with murder in shootout that killed two-year-old boy, injured teen mom (New York Post)

• Majority of Americans want a border wall for the first time in history (Daily Mail)

• NYC mayor says city should walk back sanctuary laws (Washington Free Beacon)

• Denver government may furlough its American staff to put illegals on its payroll (Daily Wire)

• He endorsed Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then he landed a professorship at Columbia University. (Washington Free Beacon)

• Congress barrels toward shutdown: Four scenarios (The Hill)

• Biden to give $850 million to a Chinese-owned battery company (Washington Free Beacon)

• U.S. heading to 1970s-style stagflation, JPMorgan Chase strategists warn (New York Post)

• Army to slash thousands of jobs in major revamp for future wars (AP)

• Virginia Democrats derail hearing after Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears says “Yes, sir” to “transgender" senator (Daily Wire)

• Google parent loses $70 billion in market value after AI chatbot disaster (New York Post)

• "Jeopardy!” embraces woke agenda with "neo-pronouns" (Daily Wire)

• Tennessee passes bill allowing officials not to perform same-sex marriages (Christian Post)

• Dramatic footage shows heroic officers thwart massacre at Lakewood Church while one cop prays over a wounded child (The Blaze)

• Policy: Don’t shut down the government (National Review)

• Humor: Hunter Biden jealous after Don Jr. receives envelope of white powder (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.